A Short History of Nearly Nothing
by Ryous lil Tenshi
Summary: After an apparently unexplained suicide attempt, Ryou wakes from his coma physically and mentally broken. Fantasy and reality collide, as he tries to piece together the memory of his past and maintain his tenuous grasp on the world around him.
1. Chapter 1

I don't know what compelled me to take this half-formed oneshot down, dust it off, blow the life back into the dying embers, finish it, and decide it would be cool as if it were a series.

They're gonna be really short updates too. That way you can, at least, count on their frequency.

Also I have not much an idea of where it's going. So we can all find out together.

ALSO, chronological/linear timeline? LOL.

Disclaimer: Own nothing, etc. etc. Why bother doing these, really?

* * *

"You gonna tell me why you did it?"

Ryou shook his head. His head, wrapped tightly in bandages.

"You sure?"

He nodded. The room gave in to the crushing silence. The heart monitors, thank God, had gone, the bags strung up on metal poles, clear plastic tubes worming into Ryou's skin had vanished, he was _awake, _but to Bakura, Ryou seemed just as lifeless as he was Six days ago, when he had first been wheeled in the ICU and Bakura was allowed his first of many ten-minute visits.

"Why the fuck did you jump out the window."

Another shake of the head. Bakura thought he might tear his hair out in frustration. He wanted to throttle Ryou, to beat and bruise him, to shout at him, kick, punch, _something_, that would force him to make a sound, and wrench the despair that was building up in Bakura's chest.

A broken shoulder. A concussion, brain damage. And irreparable damage to his spine, paralyzing him permanently from the waist down.

_What the fuck went wrong here?_

"Is it my fault?" Bakura couldn't hide the note of despair from his voice. Ryou merely shrugged, his eyes still fixed on his shaking hands. "Was it what I said? About you?" Another shrug. "Did you feel like I trapped you? What?" Another miserable, useless shrug. "Fucking say something to me Ryou!"

He started to cry again. Quiet sniffles, at first, but soon he was fighting down sobs, head bowed. Bakura paused, watching as Ryou tried to control himself, trying to drag up some sort of guilt or sympathy, some sort of warm, human emotion within himself.

But all Bakura felt was intense anger and misery.

"Stop crying!" Bakura shouted. "Crying is for weaklings! Is that what you are, Ryou? A pathetic little weakling?" Slowly, the teenager lowered his hands, his shoulders shaking. "Are you?"

He nodded. He actually nodded. Bakura wondered if he could hit Ryou hard enough to hurt without risking further brain damage. He decided against it. Instead, he stood up, kicking heavily at the solid metal frame of the gurney, which clattered loudly. Ryou winced, and wiped delicately at his eyes, wishing he had his long white hair to fall over his eyes. One hand gently touched the bandages, his lower lip trembling.

"Yes, Ryou, they shaved it off." Bakura muttered, looking at the wall "So they could slice your skull open, and try and stop your brain from bleeding all over the fucking place." His voice was riddled with an odd sort of disgust – one would expect he would enjoy something so gruesome. "So they could save your _life_." He sighed deeply again, trying so hard to control his breathing and heartrate. He was close to flying off the handle, he knew it, and it was the last thing Ryou needed at the moment.

He turned. His heart jammed tightly in his throat, Bakura walked towards the bed, and climbed onto the mattress, sitting down on top of Ryou's paralyzed legs. Of course, he couldn't feel a thing. Ryou protested silently, looking away, covering his face with his hands, but Bakura easily gathered his wrists with long, bony fingers, the other hand grabbing his face, forcing Ryou to look into his eyes. There really was no escaping his cold, terrified, scrutinising gaze. Not now.

"Why did you try to kill yourself." Bakura demanded, his voice shaking.

Ryou's eyes were filling with tears again, and they spilled over as he blinked, cascading down his cheeks. Taking pity on the boy, Bakura brushed them away with his thumb, but never broke his gaze with Ryou.

"Do you remember much of what happened?" Bakura tried again. After a moment of inaction, Ryou slowly shook his head, blinking again. Bakura wiped away a fresh bout of tears. "All right. You were standing on the ledge of a twenty-fourth-story window in our apartment building. You leaned back, and fell. Instead of hitting the pavement or the road, you fell onto the roof of a parked car with such a force the metal dented heavily and the glass in the windows shattered. You survived because the car absorbed a good amount of the shock. But you didn't want to survive, did you? Did you!" He dug his nails into Ryou's pallid skin, and the teen screwed his eyes up tight in a grimace of pain. "Say something to me!"

Nothing. Not as though he expected an answer.

"Was it a problem with attention?" Bakura leaned back a little as he wracked his brain, trying to think. Put himself in Ryou's shoes. "I know you had a problem with us. Didn't you?"

An odd, half little shrug. Ryou sniffed, eyes still closed. Bakura's hands relaxed, the fingers slackening on his bandaged scalp. The elder leaned back in, resting his forehead against Ryou. The cloth scraped him roughly. Bakura sighed.

"You should have _said_ something to me... God Ryou I would have broken it off if I knew you were hurting that much... But, you were the one who said it was okay. That there was no point in both of us being miserable, that I should be able to go off and have my fun, I was... only human." Something burned in his throat. After all, that was not _quite_ right. "Why did you lie? Were... were you lying to me? Ryou?" He could see a blurred flash of brown, on the very edge of his vision. "Please, I need you to say something. Talk to me. I don't care what it is, just anything. Something."

Nothing. Ryou was still refusing to talk, look him in the eye, to give any indication that Bakura even existed.

"Fuck you then!" Bakura shouted. A few silvered drops of spittle gathered in Ryou's cheek. "You wanna be like this, so fucking apathetic, then fine!" He swung his legs over the side of the bed. Grabbed his leather jacket, which had been carelessly tossed over the seat of the chair. Pulled it on as he walked out, swearing loudly. Slammed the door behind himself.

Ryou opened his eyes again as soon as he was alone. Pulled the sheets up a little further. The air conditioning was too high, and he shivered.

"You're wrong." His voice was a weak rasp, as brittle and dry and pale as sunbleached bone. Who was he talking to? Who could hear him? Who _cared? _"This has nothing to do with you, Bakura.

Not a single damn thing."

* * *

Hoped that had some intrigue for you. Piqued your attention.

You can tell that I've been having a lot of fun in my stylistics class. Don't worry, it'll get worse. I'm trying to go for quality, not quantity here. An actual decent effort to break away from what I've been doing for the past five years. It's what got me in a rut. I could call in an AU, put it in a new scenario, but I was turning out the same crap really. But this time the tides turning. I'm going to be economical and thoughtful and genuinely try to do something that hasn't been done before. This will be different.

With luck.

See you soon maybe. MAYBE EVEN TONIGHT my fingers are just itching to write.

Laters.


	2. Chapter 2

See, not so long now was it?

It will probably take a couple of 'chapters' to get into this proper. But you'll live I'm sure

* * *

Bakura flicked the head of the Zippo lighter. Sparked the flint. Watched the small flame quiver in the morning air.

_Fuck I don't know._

He looked over at Marik. As though there were a way he could provide answers.

"You gonna light up with that or waste the gas?" Bakura handed over the small metal casing without a word. "Thanks."

"Is that your response?" Bakura slipped the lighter back into his pocket. Leaned against the brick wall with a groan. It was chest-height, with rust-red bricks that wore away at the edges, the cement between them crumbling. Cheap, old masonry. He didn't like how it scuffed the back of his jacket. "That all you have to fucking say?"

"I don't know what else you want me to say." Marik spoke with the wisdom of age behind him, when in reality, he had only lived a handful of years. His mind was yet to emerge from childish infancy. Bakura didn't blame him for his uselessness. What else was he expecting? "You shouldn't have fucked his best friend. Bad place to start."

"He said he was okay with it." The ground was frosty, the scrubby tips of wheat-coloured grass dusted a silvery white. Bakura was reminded of handfuls of hair, the same colour, falling uselessly to the ground. Discarded.

"This might shock you," Marik exhaled deeply, a long plume of smoke that stretched for six feet or more. "But he may have been lying."

"Why." Bakura arched his neck sharply, looking up at the other male. He had drawn one knee up, resting the ball of his foot against the lip of the wall. "To make me feel better? After he said he didn't love me?"

"Again, lies." Marik's voice was cold, scraping against Bakura's voice uncomfortably. It was his words that made his voice as harsh as sandpaper. "He's fucking crazy about you. So much that he knew you weren't feeling it anymore and let you go. Then couldn't take it, and jumped."

"I was sure he went off me." Bakura muttered. "He went cold. Distant. Didn't want to touch me."

"An act."

"A damn good one then." Bakura snarled. "Fuck your theory. It's too contrived. Stop reaching for feelings that aren't there anymore."

"Why the fuck do you want to think the worst?" Marik sprinkled ash on the frosty ground. "He's not gonna make it. You heard what they said." He chuckled. "Guilt's catching up, huh?"

"He didn't do this for the love of me." Bakura spat. He ignored the question. "That's too strong, too dramatic for him. He wouldn't throw himself away for another human like that. You don't _know _him. If it was for attention it wouldn't have been the twenty-fourth floor."

"The kid's only seventeen years old." Marik pointed out. "You fucked with his head. Big time. Look at all the sick shit he did for you. And it wouldn't catch up?"

"Whatever." Bakura straightened. "You don't know shit, okay? What happened with us was _just_ us." He started to walk back across the half-grown lot. The hospital was two blocks away. Why did he run in the first place?

"And when he goes, it'll be just you." Marik called through the pre-dawn air. Bakura paused. His face was grey. "The sooner you accept this shit and take the blame then the easier it'll be."

"How?" Bakura turned back, hands trembling. "How will it be easier on _me_ if I accept that Ryou's death is _my _fucking fault!" Marik took one last drag of the cigarette, flicking the half-finished butt off into the grass. "Huh?"

"I wasn't talking about you, dumbass." Marik sighed. Bakura stilled, paralytic with defensive fury, until his words fully registered. Bakura's hands curled into fists. He wanted to push Marik down from the wall, to throttle him and stub out cigarettes in his eyes and burn his nose with the lighter.

Instead, he found a broken beer bottle in the frosty grass. Bakura threw it in the grey light, savage with rage but distanced, withdrawn. He wanted violence and blood, but didn't want to be near Marik. Not close enough to see his breath and feel his body heat. The broken glass hit its mark; he heard Marik swear loudly, lose his balance, and fall with a _thud_ the grass.

Bakura turned away and began to walk, making his way to the hospital. He felt sick. He couldn't breathe. Marik was wrong, as wrong as fuck. They discredited Ryou. They didn't know what he was capable of. He wasn't a lovesick puppy, who followed Bakura with his nose jammed up his ass. Nor was he a delicate little fucking flower. Maybe if they _knew_ they wouldn't so quick to pass their goddamn judgement. An odd, fantasy image sprang to mind, of Ryou, limbs stuck out at awkward angles, stuck with glass and fragments of metal, his hair, not white, but red from the skull fracture that stretched across the back of his head.

Except it wasn't a fantasy. Yesterday, Bakura had seen Ryou fall, had tried to move him off the car as the ambulances screeched, was held back by God knew, some passer-by who knew the danger of moving injured people. Something about the spine. His bone-white hands still looked and tasted rusty from Ryou's blood. Bakura paused, and pulled them from his jacket, holding his nails up to his eyes. The blood had dried underneath. They looked like a row of toothless, bloodied smiles. On an impulse, Bakura bit down on his nails hard, trying to chew the scarlet half-moons clean off.

Funny. He normally loved the taste of blood. Claimed Ryou's tasted the sweetest of all. Now, the coppery tang, the smell... Bile rose in his throat.

"Oh God." Bakura fell to his knees, stomach lurching. He pressed his forehead against the frosty grass, jaw set and teeth gritted. He could hear someone sobbing. Perhaps it was him. Bakura arched his back, forcing down another wave of crippling nausea. Gagged. He curled his fingers into the ground, wanting to burrow down into the earth. How cold was it out? Two, three degrees? He should return to the bright lights and central heating of the hospital. No.

No warmth there. Just cold condemnation and nothing more.

* * *

Also, temporal markers. What would you prefer, to have an indication of time to try and get it straight, or would you would rather I left it for you to figure it out? _Not_ having them will include a lot of intrigue, especially as the story wears on, but it could be confusing. Everything would be explained in the end, though.

But if enough of you want temporal markers, then I'll include them.


End file.
